Fragile
by Inyri Ascending
Summary: The Warden sleeps, Alistair watches, and Morrigan has a question.


The road to Orzammar is riddled with darkspawn, and the creatures have grown cleverer as they ascend. Alistair fought beside her until a dropped boulder came thundering down a canyon wall; even as she pushed him out of the way, it impacted, striking her squarely in the back of her head and sending her sprawling. He cannot remember breathing again until much later, when the darkspawn lay in pools of black, sulfur-smelling blood and Sten pried the Warden free of her helmet, her head so fragile-seeming in his massive qunari hands.

They carry her to her place beside the fire and Alistair crouches beside her, watches her until her eyelids start to flutter and her hands claw for weapons that are not there. (He observes her chest rise and fall, the even rhythm of deep breaths giving way to short gasps and faint whimpers. He stares, and feels guilty about it- and continues to stare, and imagines more pleasant things to replace the images he knows she sees.)

"She dreams... good." Morrigan is much nearer the rest of the camp than is her custom, perched on a log on the far side of the fire.

He rocks back on his heels. "Good? She got her head squashed by a rock and is having nightmares about the archdemon gnawing on our collective insides, and you think that's good?"

"Not squashed." Sten's voice sounds out above the ring of metal on steel; from the sound of it, he is hammering out the Warden's battered helm. "Definitively not squashed. I have been pried out of much worse. My performance was still more than adequate." Morrigan, if only for a minute, looks- alarmed? By the time Alistair processes her facial expression, she has assumed her habitual smirk.

"Fine. Not squashed. But still..." he frowns. "They're awful, really, the nightmares."

"She is reacting to the dream, fool. She fears it; she seeks to fight what she sees and so I presume she is thinking, despite fracturing her pretty skull-" Morrigan raises her hand, sharply, quelling his alarm. "Wynne has seen to it already. So let her sleep, if you please. She will be recovered on the morrow and, if we are fortunate, perhaps she will glean some new strategy from the dreams."

Sten deposits the steel-and-leather helm on the pile of furs beside the Warden, pausing to gaze down at Alistair. "I regret the repair is inadequate, but I am of the antaam, not an armorsmith. Perhaps we will have better success in Orzammar; I am told that their craft is far superior to human work." Alistair opens his mouth to respond, but the qunari has already moved past. "A safe watch to you, Grey Warden." Sten disappears into the rising darkness that borders their camp- he, as always, will take the first watch.

"Will you be taking the second watch, then?" Morrigan stretches, arching her back (always a few degrees more than strictly necessary); he averts his gaze, avoiding her. "So I do not merit your interest? No matter. It would be terribly awkward, I think... the apostate and the templar; how the gossips would talk!" She laughs, and bares her teeth; the hair rises on the back of his neck.

"You are correct on two accounts, Morrigan. You are an apostate-" he rises and takes a step toward her, testing; her eyes glitter hard in the firelight- "and I will be taking second watch. Good night." Alistair retakes his place on the ground beside the Warden. (She sleeps, still, fighting against a thousand darkspawn on the battlefield of her dreams. He knows these dreams well, and reaches out despite himself to uncurl her clenched fists.)

Morrigan's words, when they come, are so quiet he can barely hear them. "Your manners leave much to be desired, templar, and your mother ought to have taught you not to stare."

"My mother-" he turns back to face her. The little amulet swings on its chain, to-and-fro, and comes to rest, cool- too cool, even for nightfall in mountain country- against his skin; he lets the thought fade. "I never knew my mother. Arl Eamon's maids raised me, really. 'Don't stare, Alistair.' 'Don't play with your food, Alistair.' 'Be a good boy and everything will be all right, Alistair.'" He sighs. "I wasn't a very good student, which I suppose is why I ended up here."

The Warden stirs in her sleep, and finally seems to calm; her limbs straighten, her breathing eases. Her hands, which had been closed despite Alistair's best efforts to open them, relax, and her fingers lace through his before he has a chance to pull away.

(And in that moment the moon stops in its path through the heavens and hangs unmoving in the sky, the archdemon drops dead and the rest of the world falls away; there is only her hand in his, and the dull ache in his chest that builds until he realizes he is holding his breath.)

"You care for her." It is not a question. When Alistair looks up, Morrigan has settled back onto the log. "This will not end well for you, Warden. Do you know what killing an archdemon requires?" He finally exhales, and shakes his head.

"They didn't- there wasn't time, but I thought that-" and even before he can finish the thought she sighs.

"I shall speak with you, then, when she wakes. She must be prepared for what is to come." She shakes her head. "One of you will fall, and we will have precious little time for self-sacrificing absurdity. 'Tis a foolish thing, to sacrifice oneself so a lover might live."

He reddens, and hopes the night covers his face well enough. "We're not- I mean, we haven't... I've never even kissed her."

"Would you refuse her, if she offered?" Morrigan inclines her head, pointedly, at his hands still interlaced in the sleeping Warden's.

He sits in silence, hoping that perhaps if he ignores her she will go away, but minutes pass and he can still feel her presence- a hum at the edge of his senses, a last remaining vestige of his templar training.

"Alistair, truly." He can barely see her eyes across the campfire, two gleaming pinpoints of reflected flame that make him oddly nervous. "Do you trust her?"

"Of course I do, but-" and suddenly she is next to him; he is caught in the cold aura of the witch's staff and cannot move away. The feathers and scraps of her skirts catch the wind and flutter against his armor, giving him the sense of something decidedly indecent. Alistair shudders, and clings to the Warden's hands all the tighter; she smiles in her sleep as he looks up at Morrigan, despairing. "But I don't know how to tell her."

"Perhaps a flower? Mother often told me that most women are very fond of flowers," Morrigan says, and smiles.


End file.
